Category Archives: prediction markets

I recently withdrew money from an InTrade account I’ve had for some years. The total cost of withdrawing the money was $53.10: A $20 fee to InTrade for "processing the bank wire", a €10 ($13.10) wire-transfer fee to National Irish … Continue reading →

Tradesports, one of the most venerable real-money prediction markets, has closed. I’m not sure what this means for spin-off site InTrade, which recently increased the cost of withdrawing funds. But it can’t be good news, especially now that US election … Continue reading →

Here’s today’s intraday chart of Sarah Palin’s contract at InTrade: this is meant to show the crowd’s wisdom on the question of whether she will be John McCain’s vice-presidential nominee. (The times are Irish, so they’re 5 hours ahead of … Continue reading →

Don Fishback and Barry Ritholtz are shocked — shocked! — that the InTrade recession contract is based on hard GDP numbers rather than, um, something else, maybe an NBER pronouncement the timing of which is entirely unknown. The fact is … Continue reading →

Mark Gongloff has a rather silly attack on prediction markets today. Let’s start at the beginning: John McCain’s presidential campaign is doomed — at least, if you still believe what political futures markets indicate. At the Irish electronic exchange Intrade, … Continue reading →

The SPITZER.RESIGN.MAR08 contract at InTrade has been trading between 80 and 90 today, with the last trade at 85: essentially, the market is saying that there’s a 15% probability he won’t resign by the end of the month. Obviously, there … Continue reading →

After the polls closed in Texas last night, the DEM.TX.OBAMA contract on InTrade – the one judging his chances of winning the Texas primary – spiked up to 85, before embarking on a long and steady decline to zero. Clearly … Continue reading →

There’s a great example of the mathematics of dependent and independent variables over at InTrade right now. The betting company has just launched a CLINTON.LIFELINE contract, which reflects her chances of winning all three of the Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania … Continue reading →

How did InTrade do at the Oscars? Pretty well, it turns out. All the favorites – anybody trading above say 65 – won in their category. Immediately before the announcements were made, No Country For Old Men was trading in … Continue reading →

Over at InTrade, Hillary Clinton is tanking. Her chances of winning Ohio were 65% yesterday; that contract last traded at 47.5%. Meanwhile, her chances in Texas have plunged from 48% yesterday to just 30% now. The last time we saw … Continue reading →

InTrade has just launched a new contract: The Exchange has listed a market on an earthquake of at least 9.0 on the Richter Scale ocurring anywwhere in the world in 2008… This contract will settle (expire) at 100 ($10.00) if … Continue reading →

The 2008.PRES.OBAMA contract last traded at 51 – which means that, at least according to InTrade, and as of right now, Barack Obama is probably going to be the next president of the United States. (HT: Mankiw)

I had a long conversation about prediction markets and data-crunching with Justin Wolfers at the Money:Tech conference last week, which continued over the weekend via email. Given that we’re both bloggers, it seems time to bring the debate out into … Continue reading →

According to InTrade, there’s a 58% chance that the US will see a recession in 2008. That number is higher than the 43% probability assigned to recession by economists polled by the WSJ. But there’s no real discrepancy there, says … Continue reading →

Justin Wolfers is unapologetic in the wake of Hillary Clinton winning the New Hampshire primary. Clinton’s victory, he says, was "one of the most surprising upsets in U.S. political history": Election-eve trading had suggested that Sen. Obama had a 92% … Continue reading →

While I’m on the subject of prediction markets, I might also add that they’re not even internally consistent, some of the time. Brian Weatherson has looked at arbitrage opportunities across markets, but they exist within markets as well. Here’s some … Continue reading →

Paul Krugman is right: prediction markets are looking pretty pathetic this morning. On Monday I noted that Obama had become the Democratic heir presumptive more or less overnight, saying that "the speed with which Clinton and Obama have traded places … Continue reading →

In April, Obama was Google and Clinton was General Electric. By Friday, Obama was the alternative-energy sector while Clinton was Citigroup. Today, we’re told that Obama is Apple, and Clinton is Dell. None of these metaphors are very useful, but … Continue reading →

The UK has a new tradeable derivatives contract on house prices, which shows house prices falling by 7% next year. That has Tim Harford worried: futures markets are "better than cheap-talk forecasts" in terms of being right, he says. But … Continue reading →

Last week, I wrote about the TradeSports contract on whether Alex Rodriguez would stay at the Yankees. It might be "a screaming buy," I said, but warned that it was very illiquid. So what has happened to the contract now … Continue reading →

According to the most recent trades on InTrade, the chance of Al Gore running for president is 11%, the chance of his receiving the Democratic nomination is 6.4%, and the chance of his winning the presidency is 5.7%. Which means … Continue reading →

Barkley Rosser is unimpressed by the InTrade speculation about the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics: The various betting markets on the Sveriges Riksbank Prize for Economics in Memory of Alfred Nobel, such as intrade.com, were just way off. … Continue reading →